


Awake

by vinyl_octopus



Series: Tumblr prompt fills [17]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Insomnia, M/M, attic love nest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:46:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinyl_octopus/pseuds/vinyl_octopus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written to fill this prompt from MXDP:<br/>Douglas stays the night at Martin’s place for the first time. The attic is not nearly as bad as he imagined. Maybe a bit on the small side, but y’know, liveable. On first sight even charming. Although… the students have no respect for privacy, the tap drips, the bed creaks, the mattress feels like a bag of potatoes, student party starts at 1AM, there is mice and bats, you name it… Just a series of little incidents and accidents to which Martin is used to, but are a disaster for Douglas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mxdp](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mxdp).



Douglas was quivering. Partly from the warm, wet attentions Martin was giving his inner thigh, and partly because of the icy draught hissing through the skylight above him.

“MARTIN?”

Douglas jolted as his lover’s name was bellowed up the stairs; an unexpected klaxon over the low rumble of voices, music and laughter from the student party two storeys below.

“YEAH?” Martin seemed unperturbed, barely pausing in his lapping as he engaged in a shouting contest with his youthful flatmate.

So much for the party providing an extra level of aural privacy. A syncopated rhythm of thuds precipitated the arrival of said youth right outside the door. Douglas knew that was who it was, because the door was flung open to reveal a slightly beardy twenty-year-old brandishing a half-crushed box of Frosties and flanked by a pounding increase in the volume of the party.

Douglas froze as a broad shaft of light sprang from the doorway across the bed – and their naked bodies. Martin simply flipped the duvet back up to cover their modesty and twisted towards the intruder. The boy at the door blushed and ducked back into the hallway, pulling the door not-quite-closed with him. “Sorry! Martin, just wondered if I could take the last of this box? I can pay you back in courgettes and tomatoes?”

“No problem. Just shut the door properly, would you?” Martin was already slithering back down Douglas’s body as the door clicked shut.

“Don’t you have a lock?” Douglas could hear his voice was strangled. Martin didn’t seem to have noticed; his ardour, unlike Douglas’s, not remotely dampened.

“Hmmm?” Martin was nipping his way back up from Douglas’s knee. “Oh. No. Not much point, really. No one bothers, here.” This last word was released as a hot stream of breath right over Douglas’s groin. It was nearly enough to distract him.

Except this was a bit too much like being a teenager in danger of being caught by his parents – or indeed, like a parent being caught by his children. A couple of utterly mortifying incidents had given Douglas a lifelong respect for functioning locks.

“I’m sorry, Martin.” He avoided kneeing Martin in the face as he leapt off the bed and hauled the desk chair over to tuck under the door handle lest the rest of the partygoers decide to investigate the attic.

Martin just blinked at him, sprawled on his side where he’d landed. “I hadn’t picked you for a prude, Douglas.”

Douglas raised a brow and launched himself back onto the bed with a growl. “It’s hardly PRUDISH to want to devour my lover without an audience.” He underlined his point with a bruising kiss to Martin’s smirk and not long after that they were both a little too preoccupied to notice if they had an audience.

 

3AM

Martin whuffled a contented slumbering noise into Douglas’s chest. Douglas wrapped his arms a little more snugly around him and tried not to notice the breeze still spiking its way across the top of his left ear and shoulder. The house was, at last, blessedly silent. Which actually made the non-human sounds all the more obvious. An ominous scuffling came from behind his head. Douglas tensed on instinct.

There it was again, a scrabbling scratching thunder of feet behind the bedroom wall.

‘’S just Dirk.” Martin muttered at Douglas’s nipple, apparently half-woken by the shifting of his makeshift pillow.

Douglas blinked, confused. Surely Martin didn’t mean… “Dirk?”

“Rat. Lives ’n the roof.”

“Right,” said Douglas faintly, shifting a bit as another spring graunched and pinched his buttock through the lumpy mattress.

Martin, sprawled in what had to be an equally uncomfortable starfish position draped over the full length of one of Douglas’s legs, let out a tiny snore that highlighted how little trouble _he_ had sleeping here.

Douglas pulled the duvet a little tighter around them. The wind had picked up outside and he could hear the distant rhythmic slam of the back gate against the fence. With a sigh, he lay back and tried to count imaginary sheep jumping over an imaginary fence in time with the crashes.

 

4AM

It was no good. He was no more able to relax when he’d reached 100 than he’d been at 1. And now his leg was going to sleep. He tried to manoeuvre himself out from under Martin, but deep asleep, Martin simply clamped his thighs tighter round him when he moved. It was quite sweet really. If Douglas could ignore the way his own thigh was both sweat-clammy AND numb.

 

4:30AM

The unexpected sound of a sudden and sharp trickle of tap water into the tiny stainless steel sink in the corner of the attic was a saviour of sorts – it made Douglas jump, which dislodged Martin enough that he could slither his leg out from under him. The metallic drumming stopped as quickly as it had started, petering out with a glugging drip as the water seeped down the plughole. Douglas counted the echoing drips until the sound of claws-on-floorboard directed his attention to the fact that while Dirk-the-rat might “live” in the roof space, he clearly took regular trips into Martin’s attic proper.

Well, the rat wasn’t likely to run up onto the bed. Probably. Surely Martin would have done something about it if it did. He looked at his lover’s face, slack and innocent in sleep. _Surely_ he would have done?

He stretched out with one arm to grab his phone and check the time again. Gave himself up to playing with the word games he had stored on it.

 

5AM

His eyes were dry and prickling with exhaustion. There was a familiar thrum of panic tingling his skin: the stress of trying desperately to go to sleep releasing the sort of adrenaline that rendered such relaxation impossible.

He concentrated on his breathing. Watching as the attic began to tint grey as dawn considered breaking…

 

6:30AM

Martin stretched and yawned with the sort of jaw flexibility that would make a snake proud, then rolled over to look at Douglas. “You stayed.” His smile was as heart-melting as it was heart-breaking.

“Of course I did,” said Douglas, confused. Despite the epic fantasies he’d constructed about his own pillow-top mattress at home, it hadn’t crossed his mind for a second to be anywhere else.

Martin nuzzled back in, winding his arms back around him. “People don’t, usually.” Martin’s tone was guileless and casual.

Douglas took a moment to curse thoughtless lovers past, even as he mentally counted down to—

Martin sprang back to a seated position. “Oh! N-not- that there have been…I mean… Well, _you_ know I never…well, I don’t usually… th-that is to say--”

—And there it was.

Even as he smirked at the predictable stuttering, Douglas ran a soothing hand over the ginger curls Martin was flusteredly ruffling and pulled his hands to his lips for a kiss.

“I know what you meant.” He tugged Martin back down into his arms, squeezing the agitation into submission even as he hid a yawn of his own in Martin’s temple and hoped the black bags under his eyes weren’t too noticeable. “Their loss. I slept like a log.”

 


End file.
